Fire Emblem Heroes for noobs

Nintendo has given us three mobile titles since they announced their joint venture with DeNA. Four, if you count Pokémon Go too, although they are only involved sideways there. First we had MiiTomo. Not really a game, more of a social app. Fun and weird like we are used to when it comes to Nintendo. Then there was Mario Run. Looked good, good gameplay, but I’m seriously awful at platformers.

Now, since one week, we have Fire Emblem Heroes. As a fan of the series I can say this is a game I fully enjoy. And I’m pretty sure it is a great game for people who never owned a Nintendo gaming device in their life, but still want to give it a try. Let’s face it, hardcore gamers might disagree, but mobile gaming is serious gaming too. And a lot of people that don’t play games on dedicated gaming devices, do love a good game on their phone or tablet.

So, if you want to give this new mobile game a try but don’t know where to start, I’ll get you started and add some tips and tricks!

Let’s get started: download the game for free

First of all, find the game Fire Emblem Heroes in your iOS or Android Store. The game can be played both on a phone or a tablet. I have tried if it was possible to sync the games, if you want to play simultaneously on more devices, but I haven’t found a way to do that yet.
After the games is downloaded you’ll be asked to download extra game data twice, pretty soon after you start off. Make sure to have a wifi connection, otherwise it’ll deplete your bundle pretty quick.

Fire Emblem HeroesAfter the beautiful intro movie that features many familiar faces for fans of the Fire Emblem series, the story is explained. It seems you are the Great Hero, the only one that can summon heroes. Alfonse and Sharon, Prince and Princess of Askr welcome you, and the game doles out 15 Orbs to get you started. An important gift, as you will soon find out.

You will be asked if you want to link to a Nintendo account. Chances are that you don’t have one yet. It might be lucrative to get an account: it doesn’t cost anything and it will get you 10 free Orbs. All you need is an email address, and once you confirmed the email, log into your My Nintendo Account and there you can claim your free Orbs. A My Nintendo Account you earn coins for all kinds of things, like logging in and for downloading Fire Emblem Heroes in the first place. Might be a nice place to get some perks for the future.

If you don’t want to do it now but want to see more of the game first, that’s okay. You can make a Nintendo Account later under Misc and then Account Management.

Introduction to Fire Emblem Heroes

Fire Emblem HeroesAnna the warrior (that’s a serious looking axe that she is swinging!) introduces you to the first basics of battle. Each battle is fought on a grid, and she teaches you that when you touch one of your soldiers, the area around them colours blue and light red.

You can move your soldier to as far as the blue tiles stretch, not on the light red ones. If you are close enough to the enemy, you will see the tile around them colour a darker red. This means that you can take this one on. Just slide your soldier as far to where you want it to go, and if you can, onto the enemy tile. That’ll start the battle automatically. After the introduction the first Story Map appears. It’s the prologue to the story, about the World of Zenith. From here on things take off.

The home screen

Let’s take a look at the home screen:

fullsizeoutput_12f3At the top you see:

  • Team (4 slots): you see little avatars of the team that is fighting for you.
  • Above it is a bar showing your Stamina. It starts at 50, and I’m pleased that it doesn’t dwindle as quick as I’d feared. They replenish over time, but it hasn’t hindered me yet in playing on.
  • Next are the duelling swords that you need to partake in online battling in the arena. You get three a day.
  • Then there’s the hero feathers. You don’t have to worry about them now, you’ll need them once your heroes go past level 20.
  • Above that, at the right, are your number of Orbs. We’ll get back to that, very important!

At the bottom you see:

This screen is your base of course.

  • It shows some of your heroes as well as a bulletin Board, where you find messages from Nintendo.
  • There’s an Owl, holding a letter. Here’s where you can claim all the goodies, like Orbs, Dueling Crests, Stamina Potions etc. that come your way.
  • At the bottom there’s a sort of fountain with a statue.
  • On the other side at the bottom there’s a standing stone. Here is where you find your friendcode, and where you can add friends that play Fire Emblem Heroes too. Friends are useful because they send you Hero Feathers every day as a present.
  • When one of the heroes has little hearts floating around them. Clicking them will give you some Hero Feathers.

Battle: couldn’t be clearer eh?
You can find all kinds of battle here. Here you find the Story Maps, which you will unlock first. Once you have cleared some of the chapters you get a Training Tower, Arena Duels and Special Maps.

In the Training Tower you can level up your teams, in the Arena you can so online fights. You need a Dueling Sword for that though, but every day you get three new ones. So, three online duels a day.

The Special Maps are pretty special, lol. They are only valid for a certain amount of time. For instance, there’s a new special map every day that you can only play on that one day. But there are maps that last for a month as well. The nice thing about the Special Maps is that if you win, you get a Hero for free! Nice!

 Allies: these are the warriors you have collected.

You start off with a standard team of four, but pretty soon you will collect more additions to your teams. You’ll earn them through the Special Maps, or you’ll summon them. It’s for you to decide how to put together your ace team. Remember that there are additional effects to consider. Fire (red) is stronger then Earth (green), Earth is stronger then Water (blue) and Water is stronger then Fire.

So it might be a good plan to add one of each in your starter team. And then there’s grey for Archers, Healers etc. Making your best team is a good plan, but be sure to have some backup teams as well. Those should be leveled up too, as sometimes a battle just needs a different kind of hero that you don’t have in your base team. For example, my ace team doesn’t have an archer, but when dealing with flying enemies, archers are great to have.

Summon: summoning new heroes can be addicting!

This is where the Orbs come in. You need these to summon new heroes, in a totally random fashion. You will get a choice for a Focus: Legendary Heroes or Focus: Deep Devotion. Someone asked me what the difference was, I would say the first are “the good guys” and the second group are the more “troubled minds” shall we say?

You get five draws in one cycle, for the total cost of 20 Orbs. It’s a good plan to not be stingy here, as the farther you go, the higher the heroes you often get. No guarantees though, it is totally random.

Shop: to buy extra Orbs and such.

No need to though, the game is free to play. But if you want more chances for better allies, or items to influence the battle, you can buy it here for real money.

However, this is also the place to upgrade your castle. And it’s worth it to spend some Orbs on, as you can up the experience points your heroes earn in battle.

Misc: with all other stuff

Here, you find your Inventory, you can adjust your setting, if you haven’t signed up to Nintendo you can do it under ” Account management”. If you want to look back at the beautiful opening video, you can find it here. And all questions that you still need an answer to, find them in FAQ/Etc.

Time to battle!

This is strategic battle we are talking about. I will leave you to have fun with the game, with a couple of tips:

  • Take the weapon triangle into account (remember the advantages of blue versus red versus green). It will up the attack power with 20%.
  • When using a bow, you must leave space between you and the enemy. Your hero can only fire from a distance. The same goes for when you use spells.

There will come a time when you find yourself with two of the same heroes. Check out Advance Growth, where you can merge two of the same heroes. Depending on their stars and skill levels, it will give you better stats.

  • Some heroes have a special skill, like Anna does.  Night Sky, which is ready to use after Anna takes a certain number of actions in a fight is an ace move. She will use it in the next encounter. When she is ready to use it, the tile around Anna is now light purple. Look at for heroes that can learn such a special skill!
  • If you have them, use the highest star heroes in your teams, as they have more potential for growth.
  • Leveling up doesn’t just raise your heroes’ attributes, it also gives them SP, or Skill Points. By going to the Allies menu and tapping Learn Skills, you can teach your heroes how to perform some incredible feats.
  • When in a battle, you can set your game to auto-battle. Some might say it’s not really gaming, but I’ve found it a good way to do some serious levelling up of reserve teams. Just choose Settings in the battle screen below.
  • Try to log in every day, as you get some daily goodies, like Orbs and Feathers.
  • Fighting in the Training Towers gets you some other rewards, like coloured shards and badges. Sure, you need a lot of them, but you can use them to level up some heroes without fighting! Just go to Allies in the home screen and choose Level Up.

Hope you enjoy the game, and have as much fun with it as I have!

 

6 comments

  1. Great read! I have yet to play for some reason. And I love Fire Emblem (on the 3DS).

    (You need to fix your bullet points under the tips section)

    Question, did you reroll your game after you saw your characters? Or did you just take what you got?

    Here are several links that I have bookmarked –

    https://fire-emblem-heroes.com/en/

    http://kotaku.com/tips-for-playing-fire-emblem-heroes-1792029894

    http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/fire-emblem-heroes-guide-best-heroes-all-five-star-characters-awakening-fates-more-1604643

    Not sure if they will help you or any of your readers.

    As soon as I do play, we’ll swap friend codes.

    Take care.

    1. Thanks, good links! This will help people get even further along. I’ll check out the bullet points too when I’m on a computer. Reading this on my mobile, doesn’t make for good editing!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *